1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the art of specifying a position of a frame to be printed in a plurality of film pieces stored in a film piece holder means according to a predetermined cutting order. The film pieces are obtained by cutting a film into the number of pieces in such a manner that the first piece and the last two pieces each has fewer frames than a predetermined number of frames while the other pieces each has the predetermined number of frames.
2. Description of the Related Art
At a camera shop, when a shop attendant receives a customer's order for reprint, he/she keeps a foldable film piece holder storing a plurality of film pieces and writes in an order slip the serial number of frame(s) to be reprinted and also the number of reprints to be produced therefrom. Thereafter, an operator of a photographic printer checks the order slip and selects and takes out , from the film piece holder, a film piece(s) which contains the specified frame(s) and then sets the piece to the printer for obtaining copy(s) or reprint(s) of the image of the frame.
The convention has proposed some measures for automating the above manual reprint order procedures. For instance, according to Japanese published patent gazette Sho. 59-92, in an unfolded state of the foldable film piece holder holding a plurality of film pieces according to a predetermined order, a serial frame number of a frame located at the right end of the first uppermost film piece is recorded, so that the film pieces to which the other frames belong and their positions in these respective pieces may be specified with reference to the recorded serial frame number of the right-end frame in the first piece. This art is based on the assumption that the other film pieces than the first one all contain a same predetermined number of frames. As a matter of fact, when the film pieces are obtained by cutting of a film, the lengths of the last two pieces are adjusted so as to allow the last piece to contain at least two frames. This is because a film piece containing only one frame will be too short to be processed properly by the printer. As a result, it sometimes happens that the last two film pieces have fewer frames than the predetermined number. In such case, the above-described method cannot achieve its object of specifying the position of frame(s).
Japanese published patent gazette Sho. 59-34291 attended to the above problem and proposed a different method. In this method, in addition to the serial frame number of the right-end frame in the uppermost film piece, the respective total numbers of the frames contained in the last two film pieces are also recorded. With this, even when the last two film pieces have fewer frames than the predetermined number of frames, the other film pieces containing the other frames and the positions of these frames within the respective pieces may be specified.
The latter-described art has indeed solved the problem of the former-described art. However, this improved art still requires the recording of three numeric data belonging to difference data categories, i.e. the serial frame number of the right-end frame in the first (uppermost) film piece, the total number of frames of the last film piece and the total number of frames of the second to last film piece. Especially, the recording of the plurality of numeric data belonging in different categories such as the serial frame number and total number of frames tends to invite an data input error.